2005 Media Releases
Monday, 25 July 2005
THE INAUGURAL JOHN FURPHY MEMORIAL LECTURE - 'The Parthenon throughout the Ages’
The La Trobe University Shepparton Campus will present the Inaugural John Furphy Memorial Lecture this Thursday, 28 July, at 6.30 pm in the Harder Auditorium, Fryer Street, Shepparton.
Titled ‘The Parthenon throughout the Ages’, the lecture will be delivered by Professor Michael Osborne, Vice-Chancellor and President of La Trobe University.
Professor Osborne is an epigrapher and historian, whose research has given us new understandings of life in ancient Athens.
Among his works are the four volumes of ‘Naturalization in Athens’ (1981-83) with Sean Byrne and ‘Lexicon of Greek Person Names, II: Attica’ (1994).
Professor Osborne’s work has earned him many distinctions, including an Honorary Doctorate from Athens University and Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, an Aristotle Award for Services to Hellenic Studies and an Alexander S Onassis Research Fellowship.
The John Furphy Memorial Lecture has been established in memory of John Furphy (1842-1920). The son of bounty immigrants from Northern Ireland, John Furphy was born at Moonee Ponds in1842. After serving his apprenticeship in Kyneton he set up as a blacksmith there in 1864, moving to the tiny settlement of Shepparton in 1873.
He quickly gained a reputation for good workmanship and fair dealing, and by 1888 Furphy’s Foundry was the most extensive establishment of its kind in northern Victoria, being awarded a First Order of Merit and a silver medal at the International Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne that year.
A man of inventive mind, John Furphy very successfully adapted farm machinery to suit the dry conditions of the Goulburn Valley, his iron swingletree, spike roller, and grain stripper being among his notable early products.
His greatest success was with his water cart, which was copied by other manufacturers but never surpassed. In 1985 it was acclaimed by the Institution of Engineers, Australia, as an outstanding example of agricultural engineering ingenuity.
John Furphy was also widely known as a leader of the United Free Methodist congregation in Shepparton district, where he often preached. Admired by his contemporaries for both his personal integrity and his enterprise, he expressed his essential philosophy of life in his ‘Good better best’ message on the cast iron ends of the water tank. He took his sons into partnership in 1893, and the firm of J. Furphy & Sons continues in Shepparton today.
Furphy’s Farm Water Cart had made the family name a household word in farming districts of south-eastern Australia by the time of the First World War. During the war, through the association of the water cart with rumour, ‘furphy’ emerged as soldier’s slang. When John Furphy died in Melbourne on 23 September 1920, the further transformation of the family name into a common Australian word was just beginning.
For further information:
This is a free public lecture. For bookings and further information please contact Rhonda King, Tel: (03) 5821 8316, email: r.king@latrobe.edu.au. Refreshments will be served following the lecture.